


Bright Flashes

by populus_tremuloides



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Battle of Starcourt (Stranger Things)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24901438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/populus_tremuloides/pseuds/populus_tremuloides
Summary: She could have never anticipated what stepping back into the arcade for the first time in over a month would do to her.The bright flashing lights. The neon colored signs. The smell of cheap food.It all hits her like a truck right in the center of her chest, and though she can’t consciously put her finger on what exactly it is that feels like a physical assault, she is nonetheless transported instantly somewhere filled with fireworks, flickering florescent store logos, and the phantom scent of a food court.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Steve Harrington & Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	Bright Flashes

Generally speaking, Max can never quite predict when her mind is going to betray her and flash uncontrollably to nightmarish memories or send ghosts _(ok, one ghost)_ flitting across her vision.

For sure, there are a few consistent triggers that can make her heart momentarily ache.

_The smell of cigarettes. An unexpectedly uncanny smirk on a passerby’s face. The opening riff to Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.”_

But otherwise, the things that can send her careening back to a night she wishes with everything in her that she could forget are random, unexpected, and as such, difficult to avoid.

It sets her on edge. Constantly. She rationalizes that maybe if she could just _fucking calm down_ for half a minute, she’d be less susceptible to the sights, sounds, and smells that remind her so vividly of the 4th of July, but logic can’t overrule her emotions.

It’s especially difficult for the first few weeks, as every minute of every day _(and night_ ) is completely surrendered to visions of shadowy monsters and quiet _“sorry_ ”s. She sees his face everywhere and is forced to deal with her trauma head on as a funeral comes and goes, her mom and step-dad wade through their confusing grief/disappointment/anger, and her friends smother her with care and concern.

But as time goes on and bruises fade, the Party finds themselves faced with the fact that even though the Starcourt Mall has “unexpectedly burned down due to a flaw in the electrical system,” life is moving on around them.

The Byers have announced their inevitable move to the suburbs of Chicago, and the clock starts ticking down until they are all separated by more than just a few, bikeable blocks. They’ve spent countless hours mourning their losses together and begin to start trying to return to normal _(whatever that means at this point_ ).

So when one day, Dustin approaches them all with a serious look on his face and announces that it’s time to regain his title as the Dig Dug champion, the gang enthusiastically agrees that a trip to the arcade is just the thing for a thunderstorm-filled day in August. They pile into Steve’s Beemer and Jonathan’s beat-up Ford and journey on to make a return to the Party’s old stomping grounds.

It had felt right, it had felt good, as they tumbled out of the cars and raced towards the entrance. Max had felt a genuine laugh bubbling up inside of her as Will yanked the back of Lucas’ shirt to stop him from reaching the handle first.

She could have never anticipated what stepping back into the arcade for the first time in over a month would do to her.

The bright flashing lights. The neon colored signs. The smell of cheap food.

It all hits her like a truck right in the center of her chest, and though she can’t consciously put her finger on what exactly it is that feels like a physical assault, she is nonetheless transported instantly somewhere filled with _fireworks_ , _flickering_ _florescent store logos_ , and the phantom scent of a _food court._ She feels like she leaves the arcade entirely and her vision swims with the image of Billy – her _asshat_ of a step-brother – lying in a growing puddle of blood and vile black goo.

Almost as quickly as the images come, they are gone. The jostle of Mike knocking against her shoulder as he works his way into the arcade brings her back to reality. But the damage is already done.

Her blood is rushing loudly in her ears and she feels like she’s forgotten how to breathe. The room feels stifling and muggy. Embarrassingly, she feels the hot prick of tears at the corners of her eyes. The Party has moved enthusiastically into the arcade, voices already raising over who would get the first turn on Galaga, but Max carefully slides her way back outside.

Under the threatening gray clouds, she slides down against the exterior of the arcade and relishes in the feeling of the rough brick against her back. It grounds her. Reminds her of an old trick Billy had taught her in a rare moment of almost-sibling-affection when, after Neil had gripped her arm tightly in his hand and warned that eye-rolling was not something good daughters did, Billy had caught her splashing water against her face in the bathroom in an attempt to cool the rising panic in her cheeks.

He had stood in the doorway, considering her in the mirror for a few beats before sighing to himself and entering the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

_You can’t let it carry you away Max. Just… focus on the other things around you. The solid things. What can you feel? What can you hear?_

He had watched as she cataloged the feeling of water dripping off her eyelashes and the sound of his breathing behind her. When her own breaths had leveled out, he’d awkwardly patted her shoulder and returned to his bedroom, blasting Metallica loudly enough that Max had another sound to ground her to reality and quell the feeling of drifting away on her nerves.

That had been back in the winter - a few months after Max had stabbed a syringe into Billy’s neck and swung a nail-filled bat between his legs, and things had been…better. They would never win any “Siblings of the Year” awards, but they were doing better than they’d done since moving to Hawkins. Things had almost felt like they had been in California, when Billy would occasionally let himself go enough to sing along to the radio with her as they cruised down the seacoast in the Camaro.

Pushing away those memories, which hurt in a different kind of way, Max slides her finger against her neck to snag the chain hidden beneath the collar of her shirt and pulls out the thin, metal medallion hanging on it. With her eyes closed and her forehead resting against her knees, her fingers trace against the familiar raised image. Saint Anthony.

She remembers watching Billy select it carefully from a row of similar medallions at a cramped trinket booth along the boardwalk. She had asked him who it was of, but when he had told her and she wrinkled her nose in confusion, he had simply sauntered away, slipping the chain over his head. Only a few days later, when her friend at school had been rambling on about the injustice of having to attend Mass the day after Halloween, she thought to ask if he knew who Saint Anthony was.

The patron saint of lost things.

She hadn’t always understood. For so much of their time together Max had thought of Billy as nothing more than a shade of his father. The bullied becoming the bully with the most accessible target _(her)_ taking the brunt of his frustration.

But she thinks she understands now. She feels it inside of her too sometimes. The ache of feeling like a disappointment, like nothing you ever do is enough to please anyone. That kind of ache can bubble into a raging anger and it can feel like the only way to get relief is to explode on some poor soul, whoever is closest or makes the smallest mistake.

He was lost. He didn’t know what to do or who to turn to. So instead, he’d done the only things that helped him appease that anger. She understands. But now it’s too late.

She thinks back to the swimming feeling she’d felt in her skull as she’d lifted the pendant from around Billy’s limp neck. She’d had to pull it free from the tangled mess of blood and grime that had been his hair, working hard not to look too closely into his glassy, lifeless eyes. She still isn’t sure to this day what had possessed her to take the necklace, but in retrospect, she’s grateful she did. His body had been burned along with the rest of the mall _(to keep up appearances_ ) and while his room was still completely untouched, she hadn’t yet been able to make it two steps across the threshold.

“Max?”

Her ears are still roaring so she can’t quite make out the voice. She feels her shoulders tense and clenches her grip around the pendant. As much as she hates these bursts of panic, she hates getting caught in one even more. Usually it’s Lucas, a few times it was with the entire Party in attendance, and for as much as she appreciates their efforts to calm her down, they clearly don’t quite get it. She knows that when they think of Billy, they think of him with a fistful of Lucas’ shirt, smashing a plate into Steve’s head, or careening at them in the Camaro. They think she’s suffering post-traumatic stress from the entire experience at Starcourt. They don’t understand that it’s only a handful of heartbeats that haunt her.

A pair of hands grasp her shoulders, gently but firmly. Someone is crouching down on the ground in front of her.

“Hey kiddo, can you hear me?”

After a beat she feels a foot bump against her own as her audience member shifts themself to sit down across from her, leaning against the tire of Jonathan’s car, regardless of the dirt that will inevitably end up on the back of their jacket. She squeezes her eyes tightly once in an effort to push back the moisture lingering there, and opens them to find a well-coiffed head of hair sitting atop a very concerned face.

Steve regards her carefully for a moment before working a cigarette out from the carton in his hands, lighting it, and inhaling deeply. He pushes the carton back into his jacket pocket as he looks up to watch the looming gray clouds with wary eyes.

Max is steeling herself for the questions. For the sympathy in his voice as he tells her that everything will be alright, that time heals all wounds or some other bullshit that she’s learned to filter in one ear and out the other, because it really doesn’t make anything better.

But to her surprise, Steve continues to sit there silently, pulling on his cigarette and occasionally running his hand through his hair. They sit together for a few minutes, the only sounds around them the distant rumble of thunder and the arcade noises occasionally escaping the building. Eventually, Steve’s cigarette is smoked down to the filter and he tosses it to the ground, grinding it haphazardly with his heel.

“I haven’t been sleeping. Like, at all lately,” he admits. His words enter the space between them like a peace offering. Max doesn’t quite know how to respond, but she understands the underlying meaning in his words. _You’re not the only one still suffering. You’re not alone._

She nods lightly, her chin knocking against her knees. She releases her grip on the necklace as she straightens to lean the back of her head against the wall. The pendant still rests on top of her shirt and she watches as Steve’s eyes quickly flick down to it. She knows that he knows exactly what it is. But he still doesn’t ask any questions, his face a perfect picture of patience and nonjudgement.

Max counts to ten in her head and shifts her eyes to watch as people filter in and out of the video store next door.

“He said he was sorry. At the end.” The words tumble out and honestly surprise her. Despite Billy’s final words being on constant replay in her dreams, she’s never actually told anybody what he said as he’d died.

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise and for a second it looks like he wants to make some witty remark, but pushes down the impulse as his brows scrunch back together.

“What do you think he was sorry for?” he asks instead.

“I don’t know exactly,” she admits. She’s thought about it enough, but she knows she’ll never have the answer to precisely what he had been apologizing for.

“Maybe everything?” It’s certainly what she hopes, and what a tiny piece of her heart actually believes. Surprisingly, the corner of Steve’s mouth twitches into a slight smile.

“You know he actually apologized to me once?” It’s Max’s turn to display a look of utter surprise. Steve laughs lightly.

“Well, apologize might actually be a pretty strong word for it. But back in November, after one of the last basketball practices before Thanksgiving, he and I were the last ones in the locker room. My face was healing alright, but some of the bruises hadn’t quite faded all the way yet.” Steve scrubs a hand down his cheek, almost like he’s remembering the damage.

“I don’t think we had said two words to each other after that night at the Byers’, but as he was stuffing shit into his gym bag, he said, without even looking at me, ‘it wasn’t cool what I did. To your face I mean.’ Then bolted right outta there.” Steve shakes his head at the memory, his face mirroring the scrunched disbelief it had worn on that afternoon.

Max feels the corner of her mouth tick upward, but also feels her heart cave into her chest slightly. Steve is watching her carefully again – eyes not quite filled with sympathy, but something akin to that. Max thinks it might be his own grief.

“It’s ok that you miss him.”

Max swirls these words around in her mind for a moment, surprised to find that something in her unwinds at them. _You miss him_. She has been feeling so many feelings for the past several weeks that she’s wondered if she might drown in them, but she had never exactly tagged the word “miss” onto any of them. _It’s ok that you miss him_.

She doesn’t exactly know what to say, but thankfully Steve doesn’t seem to expect her to say anything at all. Thunder rumbles off in the distance, and after a moment, he pushes himself back up to his feet, brushing off his jeans. A hand appears in front of Max’s face, and after she reaches out to clasp it, Steve gently pulls her up as well.

Unexpectedly, he doesn’t let go right away. Instead, he pulls her close to him and wraps his arms around her, his chin resting atop her head. Max squeezes him back tightly, hoping this gesture will make up for all of the words she can’t seem to form from the jumble in her brain. _Thank you for understanding._

Steve pulls away from her and pushes his hands into his coat pockets. Max takes a minute to swipe under her eyes to erase any lingering tear tracks and combs her fingers through her hair a few times, using the movement to mask the deep breaths she’s using to compose herself.

After she gives a slight nod, Steve moves to the arcade door and holds it open for her. As she walks through, she feels a little more under control as the bright lights and arcade sounds assault her senses once again. She feels Steve’s presence behind her as Lucas smiles and waves her over to the Dig Dug cabinet. His eyes are concerned, but he seems appeased as he gives her a quick once over, noting a distinct lack of any bodily harm or apparent distress. He moves to the side and lets her situate herself in front of the game controls, briefly letting his hand land on her shoulder.

As she pushes her quarters through the slot and waits for the game to boot up, Max inhales deeply through her nose and catalogs the familiar, grounding faces of her friends around her.

She knows that she will likely never shake Billy’s ghost _(but she’s not entirely sure that she wants to)_.


End file.
